Forms -Text Area

Forms - Text Area

Section 1 - Introduction
Section 2 - Basics
Section 3 - Next Level
Section 4 - Advanced
      Forms
         How forms are sent
         Input field
         Buttons
         Input types
         Fieldset
         For more help...
         You try it
      Advanced Tables
      Frames
      Style Sheets
      Image Maps
Section 5 - Publishing
Section 6 - Extras
Appendices

Text Area:
You are about to learn one tag that doesn't contain the <input> command. This tag allows you to create a large area where the user can type. A complete message can be sent, not just a word or sentence. What you need is a text box.

You may have noticed that <input> did not have a closing tag (</input>). The textarea tag MUST have a closing tag though. Failure to use it causes your whole page to become problematic. The "textarea" tag looks like this:

Of course, there are a lot of things you can do to modify one of these boxes. You can give it a name, a default value, specify how many columns and rows you want displayed, and even whether you want the words to wrap or not. Here's the more complicated version with it's appearance:

Code
<form> <textarea cols="20" rows="5" name="Fred" wrap="soft"> </textarea> </form>

What you see

Let's look at a few variations of this text area. In this one, there is no wordwrap, and the size has been changed.

Code
<form> <textarea cols="40" rows="7" name="Ginger" wrap="off"> </textarea> </form>

What you see

One more time, only this one has had a value added, the wrap is set to "hard" and it's smaller.

Code
<form> <textarea cols="10" rows="3" name="Roy" wrap="hard"> Type your comments here: You know you want to. </textarea> </form>

What you see
Type your comments here: You know you want to.

This isn't everything you can do with text area, but it's the important stuff. There is just one more mini-area and you'll have a good idea of what forms can do.